The Barrister, aka The Viceroy of Breathless HyperboleThis was not supposed to happen. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

I FEEL LIKE I'M TRIPPING BALLS AND NOTHING CAN HURT ME.Or something like that.I am very bad at many things. Writing on this site, from time to time when I'm mailing it in by copy and pasting Ghostbusters quotes and interposing them with Mario Bros. references, is one of them. Knowing shit about sports other than what my gut tells me is another one. I cover it up with humor, with witticisms that search eagerly for a laugh as I hope you all don't notice that I barely know what separates a good player from a bad one other than basic stat lines and winning. Maybe that's enough. I suspect, sometimes, it is not.I say all that because I don't know a ton about Mario Williams. Sure, I've seen him demolish a quarterback or two on the rare Sunday when I watch Texans football or Sportscenter highlights, but he's largely a mystery to me. So, in the wake of signing this big ass, overpaid dude to a gigantic, earth-shattering deal, if you want to tell me there are issues with his health, his fitness, whether he can still produce at this point in his career, I'm not going to argue with you. And if you want to talk about the risk of a big deal like this, especially on a historically snake-bitten franchise that has already seen one stud defensive player signed in the past few years only to see him collapse in a series of horrible injuries, then fine. You could be like the Apologist, who - when asked for a witty thought or quip about the contract - texted me today that "He's gonna blow his knee in Week 2." Have at it you effin negative nancies, because I don't care, and I suspect that none of these negatives would be brought up - at least not in the way that I've seen - if he had signed in another City with another team that doesn't get the kind of skeptical eye that the Bills do. So have at it, if you must. As for me, right now, tonight, after hours and hours of waiting on this news and fearing that our team and our City would come back down to earth in a disastrous and inevitable reality check, this feels amazing. Shit, even Yachtsman, Crown Prince of Contrarianism, when asked for a thought to contribute to this post, had nothing to say other than "I'm just happy."Yachtsman doesn't do happy, folks. This is huge.

Looking forward to more of this.

A lot of what, I'm sure, many Bills fans are feeling today is well summed up by The Scizz, who - in response to my request for a thought or two, texted me back the following: "The Buffalo in me really started to make me doubt it would happen. Since I got my hopes up on Sunday night, I felt like Mario not signing is what I deserved. That it would be another colossal disappointment. But now I feel like a kid. Like in the 90s when the Bills could land anyone. Like the Sabres this past summer... oh fuck."Yes, the Bills still have a TON to prove, just like the Sabres still do with respect to their big money signings of last July. And yes, until Super Mario does it on the field at The Ralph, it's all, technically, speculation. But for the first time in a LONG time, the Bills went out and did exactly what they said they were going to do. And, more to the point, for the first time in at least this millenia, the stud free agent actually signed our dance card. Feelings of rejection, and fear of rejection, suddenly wiped away by the decision of one terribly talented and gifted football player accepting our request that he come play for us. That he come be a god within our sports world - we hope - not just for one year, but for six. SIX. This is not a flash in the pan. This is not a publicity stunt. This is not a guy past his prime using our team for a year to show the rest of the league that he still has it. (Cough! TO! Cough! YOU SUCK.)This guy has committed to being a Buffalo Bill. Without question, he is now one of "our guys."For that, unanswered questions or not - history of epic failures or not - it's ok to be dreaming big for our Bills tonight.Cue the Bob Hoskins and terrible power ballad! I am awful.